Working out is no different than anything else in life - if you want to see results, you really do need to put in the effort. However, again like anything else, working smarter is just about always more productive than working harder. So all things being equal, by working smart you will get way more out of your workout than by simply working hard.

Following are 12 basic guidelines that will help you work smarter and thus get the most out of your training effort. (Click on each guideline for details.) For additional information on training principles and program design, please refer to the Program Design Fundamentals section of this site.

12 Basic Workout Guidelines (Click on each Guideline to reveal/hide details.)

A number on the weight scale does not tell the whole story. Your weight at any given point in time is influenced by many variables, including time of day (we all tend to weigh a little more closer to the end of the day), time of month (hormonal changes can cause fluid retention) and what you ate for lunch (restaurant food laden with salt can also cause fluid retention). Therefore, what you weigh is not a very useful measure of training program effectiveness. Instead, how you look in the mirror, how your clothes fit and how your body shape may be changing is a more realistic reflection of what your training program is doing for you. When beginning any type of exercise program, start slowly, particularly if you have led a sedentary lifestyle for an extended period. This way your body can slowly adjust to the new demands being placed on it. If you push too hard too fast not only do you risk injury, you will experience much greater muscle soreness that may deter you from continuing your workouts. Be patient. The time it will take to reach your goal depends on where you are versus where you want to be. Real lasting change takes time, so don't expect miracles overnight. There are no magic bullets, despite the many individuals out there trying to sell you one. Be persistent. You will most likely achieve some quick initial success at the start of your training program, but from there it will get harder. Our bodies tend to resist change (the older we get, the lower the level of growth hormone in our system), so your progress will most likely be a series of gains and plateaus. Don't get discouraged when you're "stuck" in a plateau - hang in there long enough for your next gain to be realized.

Particularly when it's not accustomed to regular strenuous activity, your body is tight and so more prone to injury. A proper warm up will get the blood flowing and loosen your muscles so that risk of muscle pulls, strains or sprains is minimized. Cooling down afterwards will in turn increase flexibility so that risk of joint injury is reduced. The best type of warm up for your muscles is physical rehearsal - that is, doing the same exercise you plan on doing, but at a much lighter weight. This will let your muscles know what's coming and allow them to get ready for it. Physical rehearsal is much more effective (and much more time efficient) than spending 5 minutes cycling on a bike, which is what some trainers would have you do. However, if you're not planning on going for an extended bike ride, then cycling will not adequately prepare your muscles for your upcoming workout - so unless you have five minutes to waste, don't bother with it. The best type of cool down after your workout is light stretching, which will keep your blood moving as your respiratory and circulatory systems slow back down to normal. This will help remove excess carbon dioxide and other waste products out of the muscles, minimize stiffness, as well as gently stretch worked muscles back to their normal length so that there is less pull on tendons and therefore less risk of joint injury. There are two types of stretching - static and dynamic. Static stretching means holding a stretching exercise in one position without movement - touching your toes, for example. A static stretch should be held a minimum of 30 seconds in order for your muscles to fully relax. Static stretching is best used for cool down purposes. (Studies have shown that doing static stretching before working out can actually detract from your performance.) Dynamic stretching means moving while stretching - arm swings, knee rotations, neck circles, etc. Dynamic stretching should start out slow and controlled to prevent hyperextension of the joint, which can result in serious injury. Dynamic stretching is more often used for warm up as opposed to cool down purposes. However, if at the end of the workout your body is still extremely "hot", you can use dynamic stretching to start the cool down process, and then switch to static stretching to finish up.

When training, it is important to work your entire body equally to avoid developing muscle imbalances which can pull your body out of alignment and create painful problems down the road through either sudden or chronic (slow build up over time) injury. This means, for example, that if you work your chest, you also need to work your back - not necessarily on the same day, but over time each muscle group should be developed equally. A lot of guys like to build a massive, squared off chest, but forget about their back, perhaps because "cosmetic fitness" is their goal and their chest is what they see when they look in the mirror. Unfortunately, the over developed chest muscles pull their shoulders forward, resulting in a stooped posture that interferes with the natural "S" of their spine and leaves them prone to injury. Incorporate single arm and leg exercises to ensure equal strength development. Typically, one side of your body will naturally be stronger than the other, and you can unknowingly create an even greater imbalance through the way you train. For example, when using a barbell to do a biceps curl, your stronger arm will naturally pull harder so that your weaker arm doesn't have to, and over time the strength imbalance will increase. But by using dumbbells instead, your weaker side is forced to work on its own and so over time will catch up to your stronger side in terms of strength. Train the entire core muscle group, which includes both the abdominals and the mid to lower back muscles. In their desire for a flat stomach, many women concentrate on their abs and ignore the rest of their core muscles. This creates an imbalance in the key muscles which are responsible for functional movements (real world movements which include lifting, twisting, supporting the torso, etc.), and thus predisposes the lower back to injury. Change up your exercises regularly. The greater the variety of exercises in your workout, the more fully developed each muscle will be. That's because hitting the same muscle group from different angles causes it to develop more evenly. Take the chest, for example. A flat dumbbell press works the pectoralis major (main chest muscle), while an incline dumbbell press focuses more on the middle to upper portion of the chest and dumbbell flyes develop the inner part of the chest (and develops great cleavage!).

If you're working hard, working out can be quite uncomfortable, and sometimes downright painful. But there is a difference between good pain and bad pain. A "burning" pain in your muscle is usually caused by a build up of lactic acid as the muscle becomes exhausted from exertion. This is generally a good pain, because it indicates you are working hard enough to cause muscle breakdown and thus trigger a repair response that will result in increased muscle size and strength. However, depending on intensity it can also be a warning that you are nearing your limit for work capacity and further repetitions could result in a muscle tear. Pain in or around your joints is bad and should you feel pain there, you need to stop what you're doing immediately and evaluate why the pain is occurring. Your muscles are connected to your joints by tendons, which are much weaker than the muscles themselves. If you place too much strain on the tendons, tendonitis (inflammation of the tendon) or a tendon tear could result. Both limit normal mobility, cause moderate to intense pain and can take months to fully heal. If you experience grinding or pulling in your joints, change the angle of the exercise or change the exercise completely. Joints are meant to rotate smoothly, but past injuries or usage patterns can cause damage and thus limit one's range of mobility. Therefore, some exercises may not be good for you, even though other people around you appear to do them with relative ease. If you do experience persistent grinding of a joint no matter what exercise you try, ask your doctor or physiotherapist for advice on how to strengthen/repair the joint and/or develop a workaround solution for your exercise program.

If you're like most women, you're busy and thus don't have a lot of time to devote to working out. Therefore, it's important to get the greatest benefit possible for your exercise time, which means working as smart as possible. You therefore need to identify your training goals and design a training program that will allow you to achieve your goal in the shortest possible time. It's all in the execution. Two people can perform the same exercise using the same weight and get entirely different results. It's not about methodically counting 10 or 15 repetitions of a particular exercise, resting a moment or two and then repeating the process. It's about exertion and intensity levels, and how quickly you can tire your muscles and thus get the greatest benefit from your set. (See Basic Training Guideline #9 for further explanation.) Combine exercises to both increase exertion and save time. For example, doing a chest exercise followed by a biceps exercise and then perhaps a core exercise, without pausing between exercises and keeping the same intensity level throughout the entire tri-plex, allows you to train 3 body parts in less time than it would take if you were to do all three exercises separately. In addition, the longer set creates greater overall demand on your body and thus causes greater adaptation and increases your overall fitness level. Depending on your training goal, the greater cardio demand created through combining exercises could be enough to eliminate your need to spend time on the bike or treadmill - a further time savings! Train consistently. Set aside specific times in your week for working out and do not skip workouts if at all humanly possible. Consistency will produce greater results over time than sporadic, hit and miss training. Your body will more quickly adapt to and remain at a higher fitness level, making it easier to train at higher intensity and lessening the amount of muscle soreness experienced after each workout. (It's amazing how fast one's fitness level declines when a regular exercise routine is stopped!) Consistency will also permit each workout to be shorter, which will allow you to be more intense with each exercise and thus more efficient with your training time.

Resistance (or strength) training offers many health benefits. One key benefit for women is that increasing muscle mass puts additional pressure on our bones, which in turn increases bone density and thus reduces risk of osteoporosis. Due to their smaller frame, women are twice as likely as men to suffer from osteoporosis and in fact approximately 50% of women can expect to suffer from an osteoporosis-related bone fracture in their lifetime. For those women interested in fat loss, the study "Fat metabolism and acute resistance exercise in trained men" conducted by East Carolina University found that resistance exercise is more beneficial than aerobic exercise for fat loss. This means that over the long term, lifting weights can lead to greater fat loss than cardio workouts on the bike or treadmill. For a detailed explanation why this is the case, please refer to Why Cardio Training is Not Recommended for Fat Loss in the Supplementary Fitness Information section of this site. For resistance training to provide these key benefits, you must use heavy enough weights to cause your muscles to grow. I see many women in the gym working out with teeny, tiny weights because they want to "tone" their muscles rather than develop them. While they may eventually realize some cosmetic results using light weights, they will achieve neither of the health benefits (stronger bones, more fat loss) noted above. It is a myth that weight training will give women big muscles. Women simply don't have enough testosterone in their system to induce muscles to grow the same way as men. So when you see heavily muscled women in the gym, they have worked extremely hard to achieve this. It's either that, or they're genetic freaks, or perhaps on steroids. So if you're worried about getting big muscles by lifting heavy weights, you can relax right now. As a general rule, training with heavier weights for a lower number of reps will increase muscle size, whereas using lighter weights for a higher number of reps will increase muscle tone. However, every person responds to resistance training differently, and so the number of reps in your sets will depend on your body as well as your personal training objectives. Ideally, your training will include both heavy and light sets as it is important to change your exercise routine regularly - see Guideline #11 below for the explanation why. To maximize resistance training efficiency, your muscle must be pre-stretched with resistance prior to executing each rep. My former Coach, Scott Abel, likens this concept to an elastic band. If you stretch an elastic band tight before releasing it, it will fly across the room. But if you only pull on the band slightly before letting go, it will not travel nearly as far with even close to the same velocity. Our muscles work the same way. This means your starting position on every exercise is where the muscle being worked is fully pre-stretched and the weight it is about to push, curl or whatever is being supported by the muscle as opposed to resting against some other part of your body. For example, when performing a biceps curl with dumbells, the starting position is at your side, slightly behind you so that the biceps is pulled tight (but your elbow is still slightly bent to avoid hyperextending the joint). Many people allow the dumbbell to rest on their thigh between reps, which not only limits the range of motion of each rep (kind of like not pulling hard enough on the elastic band), it allows the muscle to relax between reps which negates all the hard work you're doing. The objective is to tire the muscle in as few reps as possible (so that it must adapt by growing stronger) as opposed to doing as many reps as possible (through allowing the muscle to rest between each rep). Another reason for pre-stretching your muscle before the start of each rep is that muscle overload only occurs over the specific range of motion the muscle is being worked. So for more complete and even muscle development, a muscle should be exercised through its entire radius of movement. While resistance training is beneficial in many ways, it does have its limitations. With resistance training, muscles are trained in isolation, and often in ways that bear no resemblance to movements people make during their normal daily activities or while playing various different sports. If the entire body is not trained equally, muscles trained in isolation from each other can lead to muscular imbalances. Muscular imbalances, if severe enough, can pull your posture out of alignment and cause chronic pain and/or stiffness that restricts your normal range of motion and makes you more prone to injury. In addition, resistance training doesn't teach your muscles how to work together effectively, so while you might be able to lift reasonably heavy weights in the gym using one muscle at a time, you may have trouble with real world activities that require all your muscles to work together, such re-arranging the furniture or carrying the vacuum cleaner up the stairs.

Functional training refers to working muscle groups together to mimic what our bodies do in the real world. Training groups of muscles that are naturally meant to work together makes a body "functionally" strong, in that muscles begin working together more synergistically so that normal movements are much easier, risk of injury is greatly reduced and muscular imbalances are virtually non-existent. Our muscles and joints were meant to rotate or twist, yet most sudden injuries occur when we are bending or twisting (reaching down to pick up a squirming child, vacuuming, gardening, shovelling the driveway, etc.). Functional exercises help train your body to be stronger when engaging in these types of movements so that they are easier to do without accidentally hurting yourself. Benefits of functional training are many, including less general stiffness and greater ease of movement, more energy and an overall sense of improved health or wellbeing. Functional training will make you both look and feel younger, because you will move more loosely and gracefully, and feel more energetic overall. You will also look better visually, because your body will be nicely toned and more evenly developed. To maximize health and vitality, functional training should form the bulk of one's workout program. However, resistance training is important for the bone strengthening benefit it provides, so it too should be a part of any well balanced exercise plan. For specific examples of functional exercises you can perform at home, I have included a collection these exercises in the Functional Training Exercises section of this site.

Fitness equipment has been designed to allow beginners to work out safely, in that the equipment guides the trainee through a restricted range of motion that prevents them from possibly pulling, straining or spraining anything. Therefore, machines are an excellent starting place for beginners who need to learn the exercise movements correctly. (It can be overwhelming the first few times at the gym which makes it hard remember all the details and stay focused, and like many other things in life when focus is lost there is potential for injury.) However, the key disadvantage of machines is that by protecting the user they are also preventing supporting muscle groups from developing properly, which can lead to injury in the long run. When the larger primary muscles are strong and the smaller stabilizing muscles are weak, a person may feel strong lifting something, but if the weight should shift it's possible the stabilizing muscles will pull or tear under the stress. Free weights force stabilizing muscles to develop with the primary muscles you are working. (Stabilizing muscles prevent primary muscles from wobbling back and forth as you lift the weights into position, do your set and put the weights back down.) Strong stabilizing muscles are key to having a functionally strong body. Because machines force the user to train in a linear fashion, they can not be used for functional training purposes. And since functional training is more practical and efficient than resistance training, machines are therefore not the way to go long term.

Whether you're doing resistance or functional training, make each set count. As noted in Guideline #6 above, your objective should be to tire your muscles as quickly as possible so that maximum growth and development can be achieved in as short a time as possible. Rare is the woman who has hours upon hours to spend in the gym... To make each set count, you need to train with intensity. If you're not feeling out of breath after each set, you're not training with enough intensity. In fact, the more fit you are, the more out of breath you should be after each set because the more intensity your body is capable of generating. (Training with the type of intensity I'm talking about is not traditional, but it is growing in popularity because it works. Next time you're at the gym, compare the bodies of people who train this way with the bodies of people who don't and see who looks better. Those who train with high levels of intensity are not necessarily "obsessed" with working out, they're just smarter about it.) It's not about the amount of weight you're using, it's how you use it. When exercises are performed with intensity, your muscles will be twice as tired using half the weight you'd normally use when training at the pace most people work out at. To train with intensity: Execute each rep as quickly as possible, but in a controlled manner. You do not want to use momentum to lift the weight. Obviously, if you can snap up the weight without any problem whatsoever, the resistance is too light and you will need to increase it. The right amount of resistance will be where the muscles start to burn at least 4-6 reps prior to the completion of your set. Do not pause between repetitions. Pausing at the top or the bottom of a rep allows your muscles to rest, even if only momentarily, which negates all the work you just did. No matter how tired you are, NEVER pause, even momentarily, at the top of any rep where your arms or legs are fully extended (i.e. in a bench press or a leg press) - you might be tempted to lock your elbows or knees to reduce the stress on the muscle, which could seriously injure the joint. Focus on the muscle you're currently training. Concentrate on isolating that muscle to do all the work. For example, when doing a biceps curl you need to ensure neither the elbow nor the shoulder move, otherwise you're using something other than the biceps to lift the weight. Once you can no longer make that muscle do all the work, the set is essentially over. To increase intensity, first maximize speed of execution, then range of motion. Once these two factors have been fully addressed, then you can increase the weight. Most people think increasing weight is the only way to increase intensity, but in actual fact the amount of weight you're lifting is only one small part of it. Combine 2, 3 or 4 exercises together to create complex sets, executing each exercise consecutively without pause. This saves time, because you can finish the exercises more quickly than if you did them one at a time, and talk about intensity! If you don't allow yourself to fully recover between sets, then you've also just done your cardio at the same time and can skip the treadmill or the bike. (I haven't done cardio-specific training in years.)

Whether you are doing resistance or functional training, the primary purpose of the first few reps of every set is to tire out the muscles so that the remaining reps can better do their job - which is to break down muscle fibres and thereby induce muscle growth. Aside from strength gains, muscle growth is what produces a change in your body shape. During those last few reps when you can really feel your muscle getting tired, it is very important to remain focused on technique so that you continue to perform with correct technique and precision. In this way you will be sure to receive the full training benefit from your set, as well as avoid possible injury. Many people get sloppy and careless near the end of their sets because once they get tired all they want to do is complete the required number of reps so they can then put the weights down and take a breather. They don't seem to understand that the true benefit of resistance training begins only when the muscles start to get fatigued. So by not paying attention to technique all the way through, they obtain only limited benefit from their training and will therefore need to train much longer to get the results they want. So make sure you maintain a high degree of intensity through your entire set, even when you start to get tired. You will find that as you tire, your speed of execution will slow. That's okay - as long as you keep trying to maintain your original pace in a controlled manner you are still working with intensity. It's actually the last few properly executed reps that really count. Once your body is forced to start recruiting other muscles in order to complete additional reps, the set is effectively over as continuing on will provide no incremental value. It's better to fail at 8 properly executed reps than to try to force a few more out by using other muscles and/or momentum to throw the weights around. (That's when you can hurt yourself.)

The human body is an extremely efficient machine, and it learns quickly. Because of this, it does not take long for your body to adapt to a specific training program and become more efficient doing it. This is why you can feel quite sore when you first start a workout program, but after a while you feel little or no muscle soreness after doing the exact same workout. The good news is that we quickly learn to coordinate muscle movements and develop specific motor skills through repeated practice. This allows us to get better and better at things as time goes on, and it also means we are all capable of improving our fitness level, regardless of our current health situation. The not so good news is that to continue improving our strength and fitness levels and fine tuning our muscle coordination, we must continually apply greater than normal stress or load on the body in order for it to adapt to a higher level. This means we need to change up our exercise program on a regular basis in a way that constantly challenges us. If we don't, we'll plateau and in fact sometimes go backwards. That's because our body becomes so efficient at doing what it's currently doing it needs to expend less energy and effort doing it. Why would this type of efficiency be bad? Well, say your main exercise objective is weight control and by running on the treadmill at a 5 miles per hour setting half an hour every other day your weight has been coming down nicely. As your body adapts to running at a 5 miles per hour for half an hour at a time, it starts to burn fewer calories doing it. Fewer calories burned means the speed of your weight loss will start to slow. Alternatively, your workout objective may be to nicely tone and shape your arms. A regular dumbell curl using a 10 pound weight for 10 reps seemed to be shaping your biceps nicely at the beginning, but then after a while you notice you haven't made any further improvements. That's because your biceps are now used to curling 10 lbs for 10 reps and don't need to grow any larger to handle this task. So they aren't going to change in size or shape unless you change the angle of resistance (using a hammer curl or a preacher curl, for example), the amount of weight you're using and/or the number of reps. The degree to which a person's body adapts to stress varies by individual. The average program length is generally 8-12 weeks, but optimum program length depends on many variables, including your overall training objective, how often you train, how intensely you train, how well your particular body adapts to stress, the length of time you've been training, the type of exercise you're doing, and so on. While it may initially be difficult to determine when to change your exercise program, as you come to know your body better you will intuitively sense when it's time to switch things up. Until then, ensure you make changes on a regular basis - the 8-12 week timeframe can be used as a general guide.

Every body is different - they look different and they work different. On top of that, people have different training objectives in terms of how they want their bodies to look and work. The gamut ranges from cosmetic fitness to professional sports skills enhancement and everything in between. That's why the most effective exercise program for you will be one that is designed specifically to meet your particular needs. In addition, depending on your body structure and/or previous injury, there may be certain exercises that are neither safe nor effective for you to do. You will see all types of training programs in fitness magazines that are written by some pretty awesome looking people who assure their readers this is the exact same program they used to obtain their spectacular results. That may well be true, but there is no guarantee you will get the same results because the program was designed for their body, not yours. I'm not suggesting that you should avoid following any workout you see in a magazine. Many of them are great "general" training programs and so they are a great place for beginners to start. However, if you want to achieve specific results (i.e. lose fat, change body shape, better prepare for sport, etc.) in the shortest time possible, I highly recommend you hire a professional trainer who will design a program that fits your body type and accommodates your training experience level, the amount of time you have available to train, your current level of physical fitness, etc. Not all trainers are equipped with the necessary knowledge or skill to design customized training programs based on individual needs, so you need to be careful who you choose to work with. Before hiring anyone to work with you, discuss their training philosophy and existing track record, and ask for references.